You are here

Editorials

On Friday, the Arkansas Senate passed House Bill 1228 (SB 202), a bill to enact the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Supporters assert that the bill would offer protections to individuals and businesses who do not want to serve certain individuals based on their religious beliefs. The bill is now headed back to the House for a final amendment approval. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill making “In God We Trust” the nation’s official motto, but his approach to religion was not excessive in its rigor. “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious belief,” he once declared, “and I don’t care what it is.”

On Interstate 40 near Brinkley a couple of weeks ago, I drove past a sign reading something like, “Big pothole ahead.” I can’t recall ever before seeing a road sign like that on an interstate, but it was certainly accurate. Actually, “crater” would have been a better word.

Women’s History Month has been celebrated each March since 1987, but it had its origins as a national celebration in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of March 8 as “Women’s History Week.”

Some time in the 1970s, the Republican Party pledged allegiance to a strategy known as “starve the beast,” which said that the way to reduce the size of government was to reduce the taxes going into it. President Reagan in 1981 used another metaphor: reducing children’s allowance. Democrats, happy to increase government without paying for it, largely acquiesced.

With the recent death of De’Trick Johnson, the people of Pine Bluff and Jefferson County are forced to recognize the flaws in our local culture of animal keeping. While county lawmakers have been largely mute on the twined issues of dangerous dogs and animal cruelty, the Pine Bluff City Council chose to address the problems with ineffectual and uninformed “breed specific” ordinances. These ordinances do little other than punish the dog for the crimes of the owner.

Sixty years ago today the literary world was set ablaze when officials from U.S. Customs seized 520 copies of poet Allen Ginsberg’s book “Howl.” The book had been printed in England and was deemed to be “obscene” by Customs.

Fifty years ago this week, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev sent this congratulatory message to cosmonaut Alexei Leonov as he orbited the Earth: “We members of the Politburo are here sitting and watching what you are doing. We are proud of you. We wish you success. Take care. We await your safe arrival on Earth.”

On this day, 50 years ago, Pres. Lyndon Johnson spoke before a joint session of Congress to urge passage of the Voting Rights Act. Johnson implored those assembled that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.”

A little more than a month ago, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal by a man on Alabama’s death row for the 1989 pipe bomb death of Federal Appeals Court Judge Robert S. Vance. Without comment, the Supreme Court denied the request of Walter Leroy Moody to review his petition.

With new revelations on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture in the so-called “war on terror,” it becomes painfully, shamefully clear that bad things have been done in our name. It has always been so. It will likely always be so. If we are not a better nation than depicted in the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report, we need to become one.

Almost every day appears to give us a new decadence against which to rail. Some mover within popular culture produces a new spectacle and the critics recoil. It’s probably been this way since the dawn of humankind. It’s certainly not a phenomenon exclusive to the United States.

Earlier this week, Sen. Mark Pryor made a farewell address to the United States Senate. One can speculate as to why Pryor lost his bid for reelection. Perhaps he was too much of a Democrat; or perhaps not enough; or maybe it was the great influx of outsider campaign donations to his opponent. Certainly, in today’s Arkansas, having a “D” behind one’s name was pretty much all that was necessary to get one unelected. Whatever the reasons, Pryor must now ply his trade elsewhere.

President Ronald Reagan once observed: “History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” This sentiment is particularly apt this weekend as we observe the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was a run for the record books, but like most competitive streaks, this too came to an end. Back in late 2004, contestant Ken Jennings’ string of 74 consecutive wins on the television game show, Jeopardy ground to a halt with one missed question. Of course, by that time, Jennings had amassed $2.5 million in winnings.

As World AIDS day approaches, we are reminded that the pace of new infections remains too high, and although treatments have made living with the disease easier, there still is no cure for AIDS or the HIV that causes it.